


convalescence

by morphological (phraseme)



Category: Prince of Tennis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2019-04-18 16:45:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14217438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phraseme/pseuds/morphological





	convalescence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bulletdart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bulletdart/gifts).



he looks fragile when he's asleep. 

kuranosuke lets akaya doze on his shoulder while he stays deep in thought, working in eden. the garden of heaven is a vast expanse of green, soft yellow buttercups in the unnatural (too perfect) grass. eden's sky either domes or remains an impossibly high horizon; kuranosuke's watched akaya try to scale it hundreds of times. 

kuranosuke might have known how to fly, when he was younger and seiichi was still with him. but it was easier -- better -- to move in space and time when he was needed. kuranosuke's learned it from seiichi, how to live a permitted co-existence, which is "to be," the simplest and most difficult of commands. but akaya excels at the impossible: he is, after all, both angel and devil at once. his wingspan is wider than he is tall, but akaya can fly, and soar, and the strong arch of his wings curve graceful over his head, a mismatched boy with contradictions for flight. akaya's hair curls just that much more when he sweats. 

akaya's naps are intermittent, bursts of stillness punctuating his waking hours. he is the most human thing in eden, the incubator of heaven's children. kuranosuke can still remember the day akaya was born with a startling clarity: he had a piece of seiichi's soul in him somehow, brought into existence the moment the child of god had frozen time in its tracks. 

what was that people would call it? a "transgression," or a "cessation." sin in the garden of eden might have eventually cancelled itself out; there was never any winter in heaven, but seiichi must have had to know what would have happened. kuranosuke can still feel the imprint of seiichi's lips bearing down on his own, the child of god's mouth tasting like ambrosia, like apples. "forgive me," he'd said, genteel voice at odds with his words and his kiss. 

sin in heaven might have been a poison that seiichi chose to ingest. eden is place that the mortals forgot, the purview of god's child and his interpreter. kuranosuke has always had a keen sense of order, and the order of things. he can tell that seiichi is on another level -- that he'd fallen a little when he'd made his choice. 

akaya's wings twitch. he stretches, still half-asleep, and doesn't lift his head from kuranosuke's shoulder. "did i miss anything?" akaya rubs his eyes, hands curled into fists, and yawns. 

"no." seiichi hasn't moved since he'd fallen asleep. it's been countless years, and kuranosuke wonders what might happen if anything ever changes. 

"figures." 

seiichi sleeps in imperishable glass, in a crystal-clear shield that guards him better than kuranosuke ever can. he'd like to pierce the glass and find out if seiichi had made this out of fear: of punishment or rejection. he'd like to find out. 

akaya moves like lightning, without a second thought. he's wide awake, no trace of stillness or pause in his features, and puts an open palm to the frozen air of eden-past. he studies seiichi's face, observes seiichi's expression peaceful and unchanging with a rare solemnity in the lines of his eyes. 

"are you sure he'd like me?"

akaya glances up at kuranosuke, wings half-furled to nest him away from harm. kuranosuke loves seiichi the way he loves light, ever-present and encompassing; he loves akaya the way he loves water. he needs both to survive, even in paradise. 

kuranosuke can guess what seiichi would think of akaya. he'd see what he'd left behind, how akaya is black or white, the (un)holy power in him and how he craves to be approved of and loved. all denizens of heaven can to some degree create and destroy, but kuranosuke would guess that akaya could go to war under seiichi's command. akaya would fill eden with noise, add discord to the elements, and remain sincere about everything until the end -- when time, or eden, would cease to exist. seiichi would own him completely, but kuranosuke's not sure if that would be what akaya calls a sacrifice. 

"i'm positive. "

akaya sticks out his tongue and frowns. "yeah, well, what do you know?" 

kuranosuke has to laugh. "he's not nice. he wouldn't lie to you about anything like that." akaya rolls his eyes, his implied 'as far as you know' so loud he might as well have shouted it. 

"whatever. sure." clearly nervous, akaya takes flight on instinct, white wings propelling his slender body to the wind. if the word 'impulse' had a human body, it would look like him: akaya's exhilarated laugh and his anxious eyes, with the gentle curve of seiichi's smile.

seiichi might not have permitted him to fly away. he might have kept him there with the weight of his cool stare, or willed away the existence of other possibilities, rebuilt the world to ensure this dimension would have his desired result. seiichi might have been able to fly up to akaya and chase him down. they'd both live in the in-between realm of true or false, the imperfect child of god and the devilish angel. kuranosuke has no such options; he'd learned to bind his wings long ago and have the middle road. his body is filled with gold, heavy and malleable -- warmed by light and shaped by water.

he is already plenty selfish. kuranosuke wants heaven and earth, the night and the day. he wants to and to be worshiped, the focus of attention as he lavishes it back. it might be give-and-take. it might be a meeting of the most unlikely equals, playing make believe in a glass house. none of them, then, are without flaws. 

he shades his eyes from the sun with his hands and tracks akaya across the sky. "just call it a feeling," he says, akaya too far away to hear him. but he'll come back, peevish and wide-eyed wonder in turns. and one day, seiichi will come home. kuranosuke can feel it in his bones, murmurs under his breath, "you're impossible not to love."


End file.
